I'm the Founder and Managing Partner of Ironfire Capital LLC, which runs a tech-focused hedge fund and angel fund. I did a Ph.D. in Management at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York, with a specialization in Strategic Management. You can follow me on Twitter @ericjackson, subscribe to me on Facebook, follow me on Sina Weibo, or Circle me on Google+. My email is: dr.eric.jackson@me.com

Cook’s already demonstrated that when it comes to the possibility of Apple paying a dividend. There’s still no announcement, but all indications from his earnings call comments and recent appearance at the Goldman Sachs (GS) Technology Symposium are that one is coming – probably a small regular dividend that still won’t take Apple’s cash balance much below $100 billion.

At the public memorial for Jobs last year, Cook reminded all employees that Steve didn’t want them to always ask themselves “what would Steve do.” That’s not what Walt Disney wanted and that’s not what Jobs wanted. (Of course, this being Steve Jobs, I’m sure he had lots of strong ideas on core principles for how the company should continue to be run.)

One area that we should expect Apple to also go off script in the future is the whole area of acquisitions. To this point, Apple has been most comfortable doing small, tuck-in acquisitions. Siri is a perfect example of this. Apple has preferred historically to buy a company for a couple hundred million dollars than a couple of billion.

Yet, it is inevitable that Apple will need to do bigger acquisitions and/or move into new areas beyond just selling phones, computers, iPads, and TVs. The bigger they become, the more difficult it is to keep growing earnings 90% a year. This isn’t a company growing in order to please Wall Street, but growing because of the massive opportunity in front of them. This is not a company that can continue to grow without innovating. They can either innovate internally or by acquisition.

Apple does integrated hardware and software devices incredibly well, but there are areas where they clearly don’t do as well (like social Web services for example). Bigger acquisitions — even if Apple’s never done them before — could be a big help.

There are endless possible acquisition targets that investment bankers can dream up for Apple to buy. Facebook and Twitter are probably the sexiest names. They also clearly would help build out Apple’s skills in social Web stuff, where Ping is the most obvious example of where they have failed to connect with users. However, I tend to agree with Dan Frommer that Apple might be more inclined to build its own social network that maximize its advantages rather than bolt on an expensive one.

However, I do think buying Yahoo! makes a lot of sense for Apple. I can already hear the guffaws. Yahoo! seems to be the butt of all Internet stock jokes these days. Why would Apple want to strap a perennial stock loser for the last 5 years like Yahoo! to its back?

Here’s why:

1. Buying Yahoo! wouldn’t be that expensive. Yahoo!’s current market cap is $18 billion. But Apple is unlikely to be interested in Yahoo!’s stakes in Yahoo! Japan or Alibaba Group (even though the latter could be very valuable in the next 5 years). We know those Asian partners wanted to buy back those stakes recently for $17 billion but Yahoo! thought that price was too low. Let’s say Apple agrees to sell them via the cash-rich split mechanism for $18 billion in cash and assets. That means Apple would be getting back $12 billion in cash and the $6 billion balance in some “other assets” to be mutually agreed to. Then, Apple’s getting Yahoo!’s $3 billion in cash and the core Yahoo! business. Assume Apple pays a 30% premium for Yahoo! (which is the average tech M&A premium recently), they’d be offering $23 billion for Yahoo!’s core business and other assets but really only be paying net cash of $8 billion (after zeroing out Yahoo!’s cash and the cash they’d receive from Alibaba Group and Softbank). In other words, they’d be buying the core business for 5.3x its trailing 12 months EBITDA of $1.5 billion and getting another $6 billion in “other assets” from the Asian partners for free. (By the way, as a YHOO shareholder, I think Yahoo!’s worth a much higher premium than $23 billion for the company.)

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Apple is worth more than Google and Microsoft COMBINED. Apple should buy one of these instead of Yahoo. If they buy Google, they can eliminate Android and dominate the mobile market. If they buy Microsoft, they can do away with Windows and take control of the desktop market.

Oh yes, as if Apple really needs to dump billions dollars down a black hole. After all, Yahoo has been SO knocking it out of the park of late.

Wait! I have an even better idea: why not use Apple’s cash to pay off the national debt of Greece? This way, the Greek people can continue to live in denial and go back to creating even MORE debt. I mean, since the author came up with such a BRILLIANT idea, why not have Apple just throw ALL of its cash away?

Somebody shoot me please. Stupid articles like this make me insane. Did anybody on the Forbes editorial staff (if one even exits) bother to review the article before Eric Jackson decided to push the SEND button on this turkey?

It’s cheap? Get into the Search business? Compete with Facebook? Get real. This is terrible advice. Apple would be wasting it’s money. Why do you think Steve Jobs looked on Yahoo with such disdain? Tim Cook isn’t dumb enough to try this.

You mess up at the very beginning, when claiming that Apple can scoop up Yahoo on the cheap. The reason that Yahoo has such a low valuation based in a trailing earning multiple is that many expect those earnings to fall! A money pit is expensive, regardless of the price.

apple should buy yahoo??? come on, we all know better than that. Is it just me, or is it inevitable that 3 years from now Apple will have bought square and twitter, and @jack will be the new steve jobs. Seems obvious..

I am concerned that Yahoo not fall into bad hands. It’s not good that Search is so controlled by Google. There’s plenty of arbitrary censorship in search. I wouldn’t throw a crumb to Facebook, mindless “social network”. Agree that Microsoft would not do Yahoo good. Bing is degrading Yahoo’s search. But I don’t want Apple to waste its efforts. Wouldn’t mind if the new head of Yahoo could lift it up, get competitive with search, keep up existing good work and watch that new projects aren’t messed up by programmer incompetence.